The lecture, titled ‘Equity, Global Health and the Fight against Disease’, will look at the ways in which the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria highlights the importance of health in the development agenda, and shows how disease–targeted programmes can help bridge inequities between the global north and south.

The Global Health Fund is a financing mechanism established in 2002 to support the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 6 – to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases­. It raises funds through the international community, especially G8 governments, but also other donors, both public and private.

The UCL Institute for Global Health, a component of the UCL Grand Challenges, is the hub bringing together UCL’s multidisciplinary wealth of intellectual capital and international collaborations to provide innovative, workable solutions to global health at scale. The institute’s first report, ‘The Grand Challenge of Global Health’ is available for download from its website.

In an interview with Rachel Scott, a third year Human Sciences student at ‘UCL, published in the new UCL global health magazine, ‘Perspectives’, Professor Kazatchkine comments: “I think we’re only at the beginning of academics in global health. Although now it seems like a natural concept, it took a lot of time to bring multidisciplinary teams together. There is a need to invest in new and innovative technologies for the future, and there is a need to do this with the developing world for the developing world. In the US, what I am looking forward to is a much more multilateral approach from the Obama administration, and I expect that a number of the restrictions that the Bush administration has placed on sexual and reproductive health, working with prostitution and with addicts, and on needle exchange, will disappear.”

‘Perspectives’ is an entirely student–led magazine, launched this year, which aims to raise awareness and provoke debate among the UCL community on the wider determinants of health. It is a part of Medsin, a wide network of students with an interest in health, whose activities aim to promote health as well as to act upon and educate students about health inequalities in our local and global communities. Issue 2 of ‘Perspectives’ is available for download on the Medsin website from 8 December 2008.